The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Twenty-Six

So it became that my third visit to Tranquility was not for a party but a wake.

Fittingly, the sky was overcast with storm clouds again, although the wind wasn’t perfumed with impending rain. It was a tepid, muggy day, made muggier by the fact that I was dressed entirely in black, which seemed to repel the breeze but soak up the moisture.

We all wore black, we Iverson girls. It had taken Almeda and the castle staff nearly four days to dye the formal uniforms of us all.

I reeked of dye. Tranquility reeked of grief.

The manor house would be open to the public all week. Tradition dictated that the locals would come by to pay their respects in stages: fishermen, farmers, merchants. Today was our day, and a line of ebony-clad girls marched up the grand curving driveway—pinkish grit from the crushed shells speckling our shoes—without anyone speaking a word.

Mrs. Westcliffe led the way, carrying an offering of white lilies. Lady Chloe was just behind her, carrying nothing but her fine looks, which seemed even more heightened in black. I had tried to hang behind at the end of the line, but all the youngest girls were there, and the three teachers at the very back gestured for me to get ahead and move to the front with my own class.

That’s how we entered the mansion. That’s how we greeted Armand, because the duke wasn’t even there. I heard people whispering from the corners of the black-and-white parlor that he was upstairs, locked in his quarters.

By the time I reached Armand, the strain was clear on his face. Most of the girls had just curtsied and gabbled a few words. Chloe, on the other hand, had thrown her arms around him and held her lips to his cheek, a few seconds too long for anyone to mistake it as a mere token between friends.

My turn. I gave no kisses. No embrace. I held out my right hand and he accepted it, his gaze drifting down, unanchored, to stare blankly at where we connected. His fingers were cold, barely curved around mine.

“Remember the shark,” I said, the first thing that came into my mind.

Armand looked up again. A little of the focus returned to his eyes.

Be strong, I was telling him. You are more than this moment, I was trying to say.

He understood me, I think. His fingers regained their life, clasping mine hard.

Tonight, I mouthed to him, another something that just popped into my head.

He nodded, I moved away, and the girl behind me took my place.

Eventually, the duke did come down to make his greetings, and if it had been quiet in the room before, now you could hear a mouse squeak.

The best word to describe Armand’s father was ghoulish. His suit hung off him—he’d lost even more weight since the day on the yacht—and his face reminded me of the jack-o’-lanterns we used to carve on All Hallows’ Eve, all sunken red eyes and bony outline and uneven teeth. The Iverson girls shrank back from him en masse; his starving, jittery desolation looked actually contagious. Only Mrs. Westcliffe approached in her assured clip across the marble tiles. She’d already passed the lilies to a footman, so she was able to take up both of his hands and keep them in hers as she murmured something to him none of the rest of us could make out.

None of the rest of the people, I mean. Maybe I had dragon hearing since my transformation, because I heard her as if she had spoken just to me.

“Reginald,” Mrs. Westcliffe had said. That was all.

And there was so much anguish behind that one word that I knew not to mistake it as a mere token between friends.

...

That night, I waited in the tower for the dark to reach its full bloom. My plan at first was to go to Jesse and then Armand, but Jesse himself had quashed that.

I hadn’t seen much of him since our night together. Only a few occasions around the grounds, working with Hastings, driving the carriage or cart. Once a fleet, illicit caress of my cheek in the bamboo grove of the conservatory before class. His music to me since then—including tonight—had all been the same reassuring tune.

All’s well, beloved. Catching up on sleep. We’ll see each other soon.

I had decided to let him have his way, since he’d been gracious enough to let me have mine.

The sounds of the castle settling in for the night seemed both repetitive and heartening. How quickly I’d become accustomed to this place, I realized. I was even rather fond of it. My tower, the old-fashioned teachers and lessons, even the other girls, snooty and insolent and so untouched by grimy reality.

The bountiful food.

On an evening such as this, with the moon smiling and the stars sparking to life in milky, silvery bands, I almost wished I could stay here forever. Which seemed a very upside-down thought, because as much as I appreciated my life in the castle, it was a place that had been constructed with only one purpose in mind: to hide from death.

But there was no true hiding from death. It would hover and wait. It didn’t even need a war to claim lives, although I’m sure the war helped. Death had taken Jesse’s parents and mine, Mittie’s father, and Armand’s brother. Too many inmates from Moor Gate to count–if anyone but me had even been counting.

Everyone who’d built this fortress was dead. Everyone who’d set the stone and mixed the mortar and thought about the trajectory of arrows and swords with each new layer in place: dead. Everyone they’d ever loved, too. You could make all the secret tunnels in the world, cross your fingers for all the low tides to steal away, but Death was the Great Hunter, and he would still end up finding you.

“But not now,” I whispered to the stars. “Not here, not tonight.”

Almeda arrived for her final evening check. I bid her good night and got a nod in response, accompanied by a stern “Get into bed, then, miss. Dreams don’t dream themselves.”

Another half hour, just to be certain. And then, right as I was about to do it, lift into smoke, I heard a tiny scratching at my door.

I whirled about. It wouldn’t be Jesse. He was back in his cottage; I could feel him there.

A voice spoke, the barest slight sound beyond the wood. “Eleanore.”

I let out a siss through my teeth and yanked open the door.

“Sophia. What are you doing here?”

She stood alone on the landing in a robe of some voluminous, floaty material. Probably silk, like the dress she’d lent me. It billowed around her in white tucks and folds, turning her into a very pale ghost.

“May I come in?”

I couldn’t think of a suitable reason to refuse her, and, anyway, it was likely the most civil thing she’d ever said to me. I backed up, lifting a hand in permission, and she floated into my room.

“Oh. This is … pleasant,” she said, looking around at the plain stone walls.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m sorry I’ve not come before.”

“We’re not at Sunday tea, Sophia, and there’s no one else listening. What do you want?”

She wandered to the bed, which took only a few steps. Her hair fell in a long bright braid down her back.

“I didn’t want to ask in front of the other girls, but I wondered if you would deliver a message to Armand for me.”

For a bizarre moment, I thought she knew what I’d been about to do, and how—but then she turned around and kept talking.

“I know you’ll see him before I will. Maybe you’ll slip out, or he’ll find a way to come to you. Please don’t bother to deny it. I can see the truth on your face. I’ve seen it on his ever since you came. I don’t care about that, I swear. Mandy and I … We used to be friends. In childhood. In London. Only friends, I promise. He was such a sad little brat when we were first introduced, it was all I could do to endure him. But he’s not really a brat. I’m sure you know. Deep down, he’s quite funny and kind. And when I saw him today at Tranquility, in that horrid parlor, I just … I lost my words, I suppose. I lost what I’d meant to say to him. That I was sorry. I didn’t know Aubrey as I did Mandy, but he was always nice to us. Not teasing the way some big brothers are, but good-natured. He was so clearly the duke’s favorite; I know that must have been hard for them both sometimes. But Mandy loved him. So I wanted to say how sorry I was, that I remember Aubrey and I’ll miss him, as well. But I didn’t.”

She seemed to run out of air. Even in the voluminous robe, she looked smaller and more vulnerable than she ever had, though that might have been only a deception of the shadows.

“All right,” I said gently, and escorted her back to the door. “I’ll tell him.”

Tender creatures, these aristocrats. Who would have guessed?

...

I knew no other chambers at Tranquility but the ones I’d been in before. The parlor, the ballroom, the study. I figured Armand’s bedroom would be on the second floor, possibly the third. But it turned out it was on the fourth, a lone secluded chamber, the last before the wing ended in breezes and open space.

A rough wall of plywood had been put up to block the sudden conclusion of the house. A tarpaulin had been nailed over that; it looked streaked with moisture, probably from all the recent storms.

I smoked around the gaps between the plywood and Tranquility’s wall and found myself in one of those richly paneled hallways, with embossed strips of copper going green decorating the tops of both walls.

I hung in the air, obviously out of place. Had anyone emerged from the stairway at the other end of the corridor, they’d think there was a fire.

But no one came up. There was only one heartbeat on this level of the manor house, and it emanated from the one room with a closed door.

I thought about smoking through the keyhole or under the gap at the bottom, but it seemed, well, rude to show up like that. This was his home, not mine, and even though he’d had no qualms about barging into my bedroom uninvited, I was not him.

So I Turned back to girl in the hall, raised my fist, and knocked.

I heard him stirring. The knob began to turn. I grabbed it and held the door in place before he could open it more than a crack.

“Do you have a blanket or something?”

The knob released. He padded away, came back with a quilt that he thrust through the gap in the doorway. I wrapped myself up and went in.

Electric lights, not even gas. No soot, no flickering. I’d never get used to them.

Colored-glass chandeliers lit the room in pools of artificial glow. Newspaper pages scattered the floor beneath the windows, as if he’d been reading there for days and no one had bothered to come and pick them up. There was a rumpled bed with stiffly draped curtains, a few rugs, a desk holding empty wineglasses, and a fireplace—no fire—with a mantel of polished red stone. None of the furniture matched. It seemed as if they were pieces culled from other sections of the mansion, lumped together for convenience and nothing else.

Even so, it was a remarkably spare space, considering its size. The students’ suites at Iverson had more frippery than this.

Armand was staring at me, his hand still on the knob.

“I told you I’d come,” I said. Then, when he didn’t move: “You should close the door.”

He did. I wandered forward into the chamber, the quilt dragging behind me in an angled, weighted train.

I looked up, stepped out from beneath the buzz of a chandelier, and turned around to find him again. He hadn’t yet moved.

“I’ve a message for you from Lady Sophia.”

His face remained empty.

“She apologizes for not expressing her condolences properly to you today. She said to tell you that she’s sorry. That she liked your brother and she’ll miss him.”

“Sophia knew you were coming here? Tonight?”

“No. She thinks we’re lovers. She thought we’d steal away somehow to see each other soon.”

That seemed to wake him some. He took a step toward me, despair roughening his tone.

“Is that why you came?”

“No, my lord.” But since I didn’t have any answer beyond that, I went to his bed and sat upon its edge. I hooked my heels in place against the black-walnut frame and laced my fingers together in my lap. Then I waited.

It took him about two minutes to come over. He climbed up beside me, not touching, and sat with his shoulders slumped. He smelled of sandalwood aftershave and wine.

“I guess you’ll have to be a sodding duke now,” I tried—clumsy, tasteless, and he only winced.

“Sorry.” I covered his hand with mine. “That was dumb.”

“No, you’re right. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been stewing about it. Me and Reggie both. I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t remotely what either of us wanted.”

“I’m sure you’ll do swimmingly.”

“Bugger that,” he said, tired. “And bugger Aubrey, too. I wish I could say that to his face, even if he did go down a hero in a dogfight. Tell him what an ass he is for dying. For leaving me here like this.”

“I know.”

His hand twisted around until it covered mine.

“Isn’t it peculiar, Eleanore,” he said, not making it a question. “I know that you know.” He sighed. “They couldn’t even scrape together enough of his body to return it to us. They had to identify the plane by its numbers. What they could see of the numbers. All the rest of it—all of him—burned up.”

I’d never suffered another’s bereavement before. I’d gone through the steps of my own, of course, but only in private moments, tears in pillows or hidden in the falling rain. This was something very new and different to me: Armand’s unfiltered grief, so bare and so deep.

So naturally my instinct was to deflect it.

“How is your father?”

Armand squeezed his eyes closed. “You saw him. Looks splendid, doesn’t he? The butler can’t uncork the bottles of claret fast enough.”

I glanced over at the wineglasses on the desk but said only, “Maybe what he needs is you nearby. You know, just being around him more. That might help.”

“He can’t even look me in the face. Didn’t you catch that? It’s like if he looks at me, he sees only his dead son, not his live one. It fills him with hate.”

“I’m sure it’s not—”

“He’s getting in guns,” Armand said. “Crates and crates of guns. He’s always been a collector. He and some of his blokes, they even formed a hunting club. But this is something different. This is … more. Today it was machine guns.”

I tipped my head. “What’s that?”

“They’re quite modern.” He scratched at his shoulder through his shirt and straightened some. “They use bullets on a belt that’s fed into a drum. It’s thoroughly—” He noticed my face. “They fire a lot of bullets very, very quickly. Quicker than anything else.”

I looked up and around the bedroom, the mismatched furniture, the weirdly firm light. “Why? What could you hunt with those? What could they have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s what’s so unnerving.”

I rubbed a hand to my forehead, feeling an ache beginning to build behind my skull. “Armand.”

His eyes went to mine.

I had to say this carefully; I had no wish to add to his despair, but I couldn’t let it go. “Do you think … do you suppose it’s possible that your father might … mean to do you any harm?”

But I’d actually made him smile. A real one, too, even if it came acerbic and thin. “With a pair of Vickers? Not unless he means to mount them in the hallway and spray me with bullets when I’m not paying attention. Seems like rather a spot of work for him. Surely even an unwelcome heir is better than none.”

I returned his smile as I pulled away my hand. “I think we need to teach you how to Turn to smoke, just in case. It’s a handy thing to be able to vanish in a hurry.”

His smile widened, but there was no humor left to it. “Handy.” He fell back against the blankets of the bed, his eyes gone shiny and hard. “If I could vanish into smoke, Eleanore, I’d leave this place and never return. That’s a promise.”

“Just like Rue,” I said softly.

“Yes. Why not? Just like Rue.”

...

“I’m spending until dawn with you,” I said firmly. “Don’t bother to argue.”

“God forbid,” said Jesse, solemn.

I pushed past him into the cottage. He’d been waiting up for me, I could tell. There was a book spread facedown upon the table, a pair of lamps lit beside it.

“I thought you said you were resting tonight.”

“Aye. I was. But then it occurred to me that the bed wasn’t nearly so comfortable without you. So I got up and hoped.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and dug my toes into the soft nap of the rug. The cottage had been built within a protective circle of birches; even during the heat of day, it was never very warm.

“You hoped for me?” I asked, uncertain.

Jesse came close, put his arms around me, and buried his face in my hair. “As always. As ever.”

“And I came,” I whispered, closing my eyes, breathing him. The ache behind my forehead began to unbind.

“And you came,” he agreed.

And he summoned the magic that was all his own, beyond stars and starfire. A magic of mortal lips and hands, of bristly new whiskers scraping my chin, of melting kisses that made the whiskers unimportant.

Our bodies entwined, our hearts. Our lives.

I think that was the night a very quiet, very powerful part of me began to comprehend how it was going to be. I think the part of me that was magic, that had broken away from the practical earth to slip along Jesse’s celestial family of stars, to allow them to bind me in their spell …

That part of me knew.

...

A lethargy had taken the castle and all the girls in it. Very few of the students had known Aubrey, but we all knew of his family and his station, and that was enough to wash the color from the cheeks of entire classes. We were given black satin ribbons to tie to as armbands along our sleeves. All the mirrors had been covered in strips of black crêpe, and a wreath of dried black roses hung on the headmistress’s door like the single baleful eye of a rook. I wondered if we’d gone through the entire county’s worth of dye.

The professors spoke in weighty voices no matter the topic. Lightheartedness was not permitted. Laughter was not permitted. Even our meals had gotten more salty, perhaps from the cooks’ tears falling into the stew.

I had not known the dead son of the duke. But I knew that if it were me—when it became me—I wanted none of this to infect the lives of those I’d be leaving behind.

No salt and endless black. No dragging footsteps of sorrow. I found myself hoping that when I died, the people who loved me would celebrate what I’d had instead of weep for what I would not.

The liveliest people at Iverson weren’t its residents. The duke had decided to store some of Tranquility’s spare fixtures and furnishings here in the empty chambers; apparently he’d finally noticed that half his mansion was rotting unprotected beneath rain and sun. For the past few days a stream of village men had delivered crate after crate on their backs, like picnic ants carrying sugar cubes. A line into the castle. A line out. At least they smiled as they were leaving.

I was making my way to the tower stairs after supper, walking slowly because rushing was sure to earn me a scold. At the end of the main hall, Mrs. Westcliffe stood with one of the younger maids, their arms filled with unlit lamps.

“Here, of course,” she was saying. “And at every window along the wall. Then you may begin upstairs. Take these from me. Yes, take them, Beth, and get Gladys to help if you need. There must be one in each. Make certain there’s enough oil to last the night.”

My slow steps slowed even more. Mrs. Westcliffe turned and spied me.

“Miss Jones. May I assist you with something?”

“No, ma’am. I was just going up to bed.”

“Well. Good night.”

“Good night. That’s … that’s an awful lot of light in the windows, isn’t it, ma’am?”

The maid ducked her head and bobbed awkwardly at us both, then shuffled on. Mrs. Westcliffe watched her go. She was so distracted she didn’t even reprimand me for using the word awful, which she considered uncouth.

“His Grace has requested that a lighted lamp be placed in every window of the castle for the next fortnight. In honor of his son.”

I knew it wasn’t my place to question the mighty, and deeply bereaved, duke. But the words escaped me, anyway.

“Is that wise? Er, that is, in London we papered the windows. To hide the light.”

I had gained her full focus. Her chin lifted. “Miss Jones, as you have undoubtedly noticed, this is not London. We are not anywhere in the vicinity of London. The Duke of Idylling has made a very simple, very heartfelt request, and I will honor it. That is all you need know. Good night.”

She stalked down the hall, ebony skirts flaring.

“Good night,” I called, because I knew that, even with her chin like that, she would still be listening to make sure my manners were intact.

...

The duke’s fortnight began. Every night, as soon as the sun sank past the horizon, Iverson glowed like a Christmas tree, merry lights dancing in each and every window.

Every window but one. I might live in their bubble now, but I hadn’t always. I’d seen firsthand what a bomb could do to flesh and stone.

The nights ticked on. The moon got thinner and thinner.